London Calling
by WriteToLive
Summary: 1980, after Sam's disappearance. Gene struggles.


Gene knows what it's like to grieve. He knows how it feels like there's a hole in you that you try and fill with Scotch and work and taking your mind off it. He knows that when that fails, you eventually get round to telling yourself not to be a jessie, and that you're a man and people die and that's the way of the world and you just have to keep going. And it's always worked because it's right. The world doesn't stop turning and it doesn't matter how much you drink or want to see them again, they never come back. So you keep going, keep turning in for work and putting the right face on, keep saying the right things when someone asks you if you're alright. And they believe you and, in time, you start to believe yourself until it's true.

So yes, he knows what it's like. What he can't understand, this time, is why it's different.

It's the beginning of February and colder than he can remember it being. He stands with his hands in his pockets, cigarette burning between his lips and collar turned up against the chill. The canal smells like it always does, a mixture of oil and rubbish and dirty water, rotting plant life. He normally loves it but now it's making his stomach roll, not something that happens often, even after the strongest of curries.

'Looks like another of Warren's old cronies, Guv,' says someone. Ray. It's Ray who says it and he grunts in acknowledgement and turns away. They know what to do. Preserve the scene, wait for forensics et cetera. Heard it all enough times, didn't they?

His eyes ache and his throat hurts; normally he'd assume he was coming down with something but he knows it's just too many fags and not enough sleep. And he doesn't want to look at the canal, or a body being pulled out of it. He'd only come down...well. Just in case. But that's stupid, isn't it?

* * *

His office smells of whiskey and cigarettes. Everything bloody smells of whiskey and cigarettes and that's another thing he normally loves but now it just makes him itch, like there's something under his skin and it won't go away. Dissatisfaction. Irritation. Frustration. All words that he could use, were he inclined, to describe what he feels but he can't, or won't, because there's this hole and it won't go away. He doesn't know why. He's done all the right things. He drank for four days afterwards and kept coming into work; people asked if he was alright and he said yes and they stopped asking. But they won't stop looking at him funny and he's starting to wish they'd just ask again, so he's got an excuse to punch someone.

Days pass. The fingers of his right hand are yellow from nicotine and his neck aches when he rolls it, catching the unpleasant odour from his collar because he's been in this shirt for two days now. He couldn't bring himself to go home last night and there'd been nothing _but_ Scotch, and bad dreams, when he'd finally succumbed to the sofa by the filing cabinet. Gary Cooper's on the other side of that cabinet. He'd imagined the man's gaze looming down on him in the dark; accusing him of something maybe, or just weighing up the other Sheriff and finding him lacking. Either one is bad and Gene can't sit still now, though his bones creak when he moves and for a split-second, he envisions shifting too fast and feeling them crumble to dust inside him, leaving him in a heap of cloth and misshapen skin, not fitting anymore.

That's about the point where he tells himself, firmly, to stop being a jessie but the image lingers and he doesn't know what to do with it. Can't put it away. He works to erase the thoughts that confuse him but he's always been a thinker, Gene, even when all evidence points to the contrary. He may not always think the right thoughts, or focus his mind the right way, but it never stops working and maybe that's what the problem is now because it seems to be taking him places he doesn't understand and can't find the answers to. Or doesn't want to find the answers to, either one. Mainly he just wants to stop feeling like a ghost in his own life.

'What's up, Gene luv? You're no' yourself.'

_No, Barb, I'm not meself._

He tells her he's fine and doesn't even feel shitty about it because he's starting to realise that he's not feeling much of anything anymore. She knows he's lying anyway, she always does. He supposes that's why she stopped asking difficult questions about lipstick, and perfume not hers, years ago; not because she didn't want to know the answers but because she already did and just didn't want to hear him admit it, verbally or not.

Chris and Ray are laughing out there, telling jokes about something or discussing a bird or...something. His head hurts. He wants it to stop but lights another fag instead and picks up a file on the body dragged out of the river last week. A glance at the face identifies the bloke and the hole in his forehead tells him most of what he needs to know about this case; he'd put the file down but now he's looking at another picture, a car upside down in the canal, no body to be seen, either then or since. It takes a minute to realise it's in his head, the photo, and the file flies across the room and smacks into the window. At least it makes Ray and Chris shut up for a minute.

Gene knows what it's like to grieve. There's a hole inside and you're lethargic and everything's an effort. But he doesn't feel lethargic; he's antsy, his blood's pumping and his fingers are twitching and he just wants to _do_ something, for God's sake. But he can't bring himself to move, the cases on his desk aren't holding his attention. There's something else but he can't find it, doesn't know where to look.

* * *

He hadn't left a will. Hadn't needed to, probably. His wife would get everything because he didn't have anyone else. Maybe talking to her would help but she's off in...somewhere. Blackburn? Bolton? With her family. He thinks. He's sure that's what was said. He hasn't seen her, not even at the funeral, but he can't remember much about that day as it is. He'd remember that though, wouldn't he? If she'd come and spoken to him?

His fingers drum on the steering wheel as he looks across the road at the flat that someone else has been living in for about five years now. He doesn't know why he's here. Doesn't know what he's doing. The ache in his eyes has changed, moved, become a piercing throb over the left side of his forehead and he feels like his head's unbalanced; one side normal, the other non-existent apart from a white wall of pain that's slowly blinding him. He ignores it. It happens sometimes, he knows, and some paracetemol and a few stiff ones normally do the trick.

He'd like to go in. Maybe he will. Produce his warrant card and make up an excuse, go and see whether it's changed in there, whether anything of the man remains. But he doesn't move because with his luck, the only thing left will be that bloody awful wallpaper and that's the last thing his headache needs. It's still ten minutes before he fires the engine and drives aimlessly, winding through streets that don't feel like his anymore.

* * *

There's a headstone. He leans on another one and looks at it, drinking straight from the bottle. His brain muses to him that Will Kane was a proper Lone Ranger, unlike the Lone Ranger himself who had Tonto to be clever and cheeky at him. Will Kane had a wife too, and she even stuck by him when everyone else thought he was stupid. He's always liked Kane better than the Ranger but now he finds himself thinking that the Lone Ranger is a cooler name, if erroneous in its description. But he can't deny it, he's Kane now. And he isn't enjoying it all that much.

This is the conversation he has with Sam, with Scotch and in the rain, hands freezing around the top of the bottle. A pointless one, he knows. Sam can't hear him.

* * *

'You're worrying me, Gene.'

'No need t'worry, luv. I'm alright.'

* * *

More days pass. Maybe it's even weeks, now. Rathbone called him into his office yesterday and told him it was understandable if he wanted to take some of his holiday. He'd said no. Rathbone asked if he was sure and he hadn't said anything. He'd thought the old man was looking worn out himself, thin around the edges, like age-old paper going brown and curling up with dehydration. Then he'd said there was someone coming up from London for a meeting next week and would he like to sit in? He found himself nodding without meaning to, still saying nothing because he'd been trying to figure out what the spark in his head meant, the first hint of something like interest he could remember in these last few months.

On the way back down to CID, he heard a radio play a song he didn't recognise. And that shouldn't be weird, there are lots of modern songs he doesn't recognise because he doesn't listen to any of it. But this was...different. A different style, nothing like the synthesised crap being churned out these days. Something that didn't fit. It'd gone before he'd walked all the way past and that's something to be thankful for, he supposes, as the crowd roars around him and players celebrate down there on the hallowed Maine Road turf. He watches, idly, smoking, and realises he doesn't even know what the score is.

* * *

There's a suitcase in the hall when he goes home. And grease from a pie on his blue and white scarf, he notices, behind a crushing sorrow that he can't bear to put a name to.

'I'm sorry,' she says and he nods, looking at the floor. When her hand touches his face and brings it up to look at her, he sees her tears and feels his own, somewhere in there, but they can't find a way out.

'Why can't you come back?' she says and he shakes his head, looking at her and seeing her thirty years ago, blond and beautiful and perfect in her white dress. He'd, _they'd_, been happy but it only felt like a few months before things changed. They both seemed to get old really fast and he's still never worked out how that happened but he knows it's never been quite the same since.

'What happened?' she's asking, and he doesn't know but a car backfires in his mind and he wonders whether he might be losing it. His head hurts _so_ much. 'Why can't you let it go, Gene?'

He's a truthful man but even he wouldn't say it if he were feeling right, thinking straight. Some truths are better kept to yourself but there it is.

'I don' want t'let it go, Barb.'

And she's nodding like she knew he'd say that, like it's happened before or maybe she just knows him that well.

Later, when he's truly alone, he wonders why he'd admitted it. And why it was true. Wouldn't it be better to just forget about it entirely, let the man become a footnote in his life? But of course that's not possible and the reason why it's not possible is the same reason he wouldn't want to anyway. Some things, some people, are just too important to just get over.

* * *

'_It has to be this way.'_

'_Why?'_

_..._

'_Seven years, and you can't trust me?'_

'_I trust you. That's why I'm asking you because I know you won't let me down. I know you'll help me. And you have to trust _me_, Gene. It's better for you that you don't know.'_

* * *

Gene knows about grieving. He's lost colleagues and friends and his brother. He's lost Sam and his wife. But this is different. This is like losing himself because there's this hole, see, and nothing can fill it up. It's hard to grieve for a man who isn't dead but might as well be, for all you're going to see him again. Everyone else can move on but he knows better; with what he knows, with what he _doesn't_ know, how's he supposed to let it go? This is Manchester, with a dozen memories on every street corner; his home, his youth, his brother. The chippies and the pubs, the fights and the love, the cars and the mates and the _job_, the crooks collared and the toasts to a job well done. Its cobbles and red brick, grime from the mills and the stench of the canal. Man City at Maine Road, his mum, Stuart, _Sam_. Even his dad and the scars he left.

It's been months, two of them, and he's drunk now, in a pub that isn't the Railway Arms. He doesn't want to go to the Railway Arms. Sometimes he feels like he could get lost in there, with the television and thememories and the way, sometimes, it just feels like the place he's supposed to be.

* * *

Every time he turns the TV on there seems to be a documentary about the Queen's Coronation, like it's stuck on repeat somewhere. He always switches over and it's gone when he turns back. Maybe it's on a lot and he's just never known; at this time of day he'd usually still be at work or in the pub but he's taken to coming home at the moment, though he's not sure why. The frustrated energy of a few weeks ago has seeped away and left him a shell, looking at a world playing itself out in monochrome. But at least he's started telling himself that no matter where Sam is, he really isn't coming back. He'd expected questions and a search, an inquiry into the accident or the way they managed the chase or...something. There was none of it though, just a lack of body but still a funeral, acceptance and sorrow and now everyone's moved on. It's like he really is dead.

He really is dead.

Gene looks at the television and hears no sound, doesn't recognise the programme showing. He sees London and a police station and a red car; a blink and there's a feeling of hope and then a field and...he's really got to stop being such a jessie. There's still scum to catch out there. Sam would go spare if he thought he was giving up but the problem here is that he can't find a way _not_ to. Manchester has always been his home, his city filled with his people, and now he can't even look at it right, can't drive the streets and care, can't walk them and _feel_. Feeling means missing his mate and confusion over where he went, and why, and...pain. Lots of pain that he can't quite find the source of.

He turns the television off and smokes. Two minutes later, it turns itself back on and there's London. He thinks of the meeting with DSI Mackintosh in Rathbone's office, which was boring, and then the pub afterwards, which was not. Not after he'd been offered a job, anyway.

His head hurts and his eyes fall on the coat slung over the back of the sofa, the car keys on the table. Maybe he's found the source of the pain. Maybe he's not supposed to let go but he's thinking, finally, that maybe he's not supposed to hang on. The telly shows Tower Bridge and he switches it off again, an experiment. By the time he hits fifty-six, its back on again. The red car and, somehow, a ceiling like a chessboard.

_Alright. _

_...alright._

His eyes close and he reaches for the phone, dials from memory though he only heard the number once. Ten minutes later, it's official and that's all it takes. His eyes open and his head no longer hurts, he relaxes in his chair and looks out of the window, at streets that he'll no longer be able to called _his_ in a month's time.

Maybe it's running away. But he's Gene Hunt and he can't sit here and grieve for a life lost, a life _missing_, any more. And Manchester might be home but this is a whole new decade, a whole new life and everything's pointing south. London's calling and the Gene Genie is always where he's needed.

* * *

There's one last stop on this farewell tour. He's seen his mum. He's dropped the car off. The house is empty with that depressing sign out front, his possessions half in storage and half in the new house two hundred miles away. It's a warm day for once and he takes his coat off, finds himself looking at it like he doesn't know what it was doing on his back.

He's avoided the graveyard because there's no point to it. But he won't avoid this, and doesn't want to, despite still suffering the effects of the almighty send-off party two nights ago.

'What's your poison?'

'Tan and bitter. An' get one in for yourself.'

If there was any place that could really be called theirs, this is it. He looks around at the walls that still need painting, the upholstery that could do with a good clean, takes in the television still on its brackets (they proved solid, over the years) and inhales the smell of beer and smoke that wouldn't leave this place even if you bombed it. If there's one place he'll _really_ miss, this is it.

'So this is goodbye, Mr. Hunt?'

Their eyes meet and both smile; for a minute it feels like he knows something but he can't put his finger on what it is.

'You tell me, Nelson.'

A laugh and that accent, as neatly constructed as...everything else, he knows.

'Don't you worry about a thing, _mon brave_. Anytime you need a drink, you know where I'll be.'

And as he shakes his hand, he thinks he probably will.


End file.
